Searching.

American music flourished and expanded during the 1930s, driven by a search for authentic American voices and rhythms. From sophisticated symphonic composers, urban recording executives, rural radio-station operators, and the Smithsonian Institution to the Library of Congress, the general trend among music lovers and producers was to seek out voices of the American people and to adapt their songs or record them directly in an effort to capture what was a disappearing authenticity. Radio had arrived full force in the 1920s, and already the folk of rural America were being introduced to a variety of musical styles that they adapted into their traditional sound. But academic and sociological interests were not the only reason for the search for American music. Commercial interests also drove the search. When the 1930s opened, as many as a third of the poorest rural southerners already...